Nearly a quarter of Britain’s licensed premises were still to reopen at the end of August, with the London market particularly slow to recover, the latest edition of the Market Recovery Monitor from CGA and AlixPartners reveals.

It shows that just over three quarters (76.3%) of sites have returned to trading since the sector was given permission to open in early July. It is a an increase of more than 14 percentage points on the total of 61.7% sites trading at the end of July, but indicates that nearly 27,000 licensed premises had not yet opened their doors.